


Between the Shadows, A Luminous Space Resides

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Prothean!Shepard, alien gaslighting, space insect smackdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 11:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9120739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: A sequel to "And the Abyss Looked Back" for Wargoddess. <3 <3





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wargoddess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/gifts).



 

  
Date: Unknown. Location: A small, white room.

Every single day, Doctor Kaidan Alenko late of Grissom Academy, sits in a room with soft walls and high, narrow windows. He's close to the sea - he can hear the distant, soothing crash of waves, and sometimes, he imagines he can taste salt on the edge of the air, humming out of the vents above.

The light that filters in through those windows is almost always thin and grey- the kind of light that lies about time, and Kaidan instead measures his days by when the food comes and goes, when the doctors come and go. When the little paper containers of pills he doesn't recognise and only pretends to take come around.

It's almost second-food-o'clock and he swipes through a book on the datapad they've allowed him. A cheesy space pirate romance, and as he reads their kiss, over and over again, the sound of the waves reminds him of the rustle of dead leaves.

No extranet access. Three books, two movies that he can never remember the details of after he watches them. The space pirate romance wins out every time.

He wonders if he'll ever get to the end.

The food slides through a slot in the door and Kaidan takes the soft-edged tray, scowling at the unappetizing combination of mashed orange things, mashed blue things and mashed tan things, with a side of green gelatin.

That's always when the ghost comes.

 

  
**ONE**

"It all tastes like chicken, doesn't it." The voice behind him said, and Kaidan resolutely shoved a spoonful of chicken-tasting Orange stuff in his mouth. "I'm pretty sure that's the default flavor the human brain assigns to stuff it can't process. That's why *everything* tastes like chicken."

"You're not real." Kaidan said automatically, before the green ghost slid into his field of vision.

"Of course I'm real. All of it's real. Or everything's not real. Reality is all about accepting what your senses are feeding into your brain and making sense of it. Believe me, Doc, no one understands input conflict better than I do." Shepard said, scooping up the gelatin cup and wiggling it in his hand. "You gonna eat this?"

"No and neither are you, you're not real." Kaidan insisted again, even as Shepard peeled back the plastic top.

"It tastes like chicken. Shocking." Shepard mused, licking the lid. "So, right. Did you know the Protheans believed not only past history was written in the gaps between matter, but that sometimes, future events could be so massive, so catastrophic, that they'd leave their impressions like ripples rolling in every direction across space and time?" He wagged the cup at Kaidan, old-ice eyes glimmering. "Our ability to perceive it, to process it, gives those ripples form. Deja vu, nagging at the corner of our eyes like that flash at sunset. But take away that process and.." He squeezed the jello out onto Kaidan's tray, a quivering emerald lump next to the pasty tan mass. "No surprise, it's still what it is, it just looks different, maybe just not so recognizable."

"That's a shitty metaphor and I shouldn't even be talking to you. I had a psychotic break at work, and I've spent the last several weeks in a fugue state, imagining I was on an adventure with a dead, crazy war hero."

"Which, of course, is why you haven't told the doctors about Ilos. About what *you did* on Ilos. If it doesn't exist, it shouldn't matter, right?" Shepard leaned over him, and Kaidan swore he could feel the static charge prickling his skin. "Because you know what shape things are supposed to be, and this isn't it."

Food-o-clock slid into Doctor-o-clock while he was arguing with a ghost, and a slim dark woman with bright eyes settled across from him. There was a black orb embroidered on her white coat and she sat in a white chair next to the white table. He thought he could hear the ocean. "Kaidan." She said, lips set in a pleasant, professional smile. "I thought today we could confront some of those delusions you're still holding on to."

Behind him, the ghost said nothing at all.

 

**TWO**

The room never quite grew dark, and Kaidan's sleeps were fitful things. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a decent night's sleep.

The ghost at the foot of the bed didn't help. "How long do you think you've been here?"

"A month. Two." Kaidan said, staring up at the ceiling, imagining he could smell salt. Two months without the sun, just that thin, grey light. "Maybe longer."

"Time lies when you're having fun." Shepard whispered, leaning over him, and Kaidan swore he could hear that serpentine undersuit creak softly with the movement.

Real. So real. Too real.

"All right then. If you're so real, tell me something about yourself that I wouldn't know from your files." Kaidan blurted out, and beneath the dusting of ragged auburn bangs, Shepard's old-ice eyes crinkled in mirth.

"While I totally appreciate the direction of that idea, one: you don't exactly have extranet access at the moment to confirm or deny. And two: if I'm NOT real, then you're just feeding yourself a fantasy." He said, chuckling as he leaned closer.

"Humour me." Kaidan whispered.

"I was in a porno before I joined the alliance." Shepard bit his lip and grinned. His heavy brows waggled and Kaidan had to choke back a laugh.

"You were a porn star." He wheezed.

"A porno. Singular. I needed the money." Shepard chided him.

"What was your porn name?" Kaidan pushed and Shepard laughed.

"Vladimir Tsepesh."

"Your porn name was *not* Vlad the Impaler." Kaidan choked, but Shepard just leaned in, eyes twinkling.

"Wait for it, Doc." His lips were so close, their biotic fields touching where flesh couldn't. He could feel Shepard in his nerves, electric.

"Wait for what?" Kaidan choked out as the ghost dragged static kisses along his jaw.

"Standing in the high wheat, waiting for that green flash, the sky red and gold. The stalks waving like the sea." Shepard grinned, sitting back on Kaidan's hips. "Wait for it. Wait for me. I told you, remember? Remember before? That I can find you anywhere? I have your scent, Kaidan Alenko. You pulled me out from under a million tons of rock, and now, I'm gonna return the favour."

Kaidan blinked, and the dim glow of what passed for night was the less-dim of what passed for daytime. He sat up, the soft rasp of First Food-o-Clock sliding through the slot in the door and he looked at the unappetizing mix of mashed foods on white silicone.

"Time lies." Kaidan said softly, scrubbing his hand over his face and the ocean sounded louder outside of those high slits in the wall.

 

**THREE**

First doctor-o-clock never came, as Kaidan just watched the untouched tray sit there on it's little shelf. His stomach rumbled, but he ignored it. Being a biotic meant you were always hungry- life was a constant stream of protein shakes, supplement bars and assorted snacks designed to keep ahead of the ridiculous caloric demands even passive power-use days created.

Kaidan had been hungry since he'd been six years old.

He didn't remember being hungry once since he'd arrived in this... hospital? Asylum?

(Time lies) Kaidan chewed the inside of his lip and padded over to the tray and took it. Immediately, he heard the footsteps in the hallway. Doctor-o-clock.

The doctor, slim and dark in the uncomfortably pallid confines of his cell, sat down next to the technicolor nightmare of his uneaten food. The ghost was nowhere to be seen, and Kaidan let her talk as he got up and put the tray back on the door's little shelf.

She paused, mid-sentence, as if she'd suddenly noticed he'd wandered off-script, and Kaidan tested the door.

It swung open into a featureless corridor that smelled like salt and storm.

"Kaidan, you don't want to do that." The doctor said. He didn't know her name. He didn't know where he was. "You don't want to go out there. Let's stay here and talk, shall we?" Her pleasant, professional smile never faltered.

He took a step.

 

**FOUR**

The salt spray hit him in the face like a hundred needles and Kaidan staggered, blinking at the roiling silver clouds overhead. He was on the hull of a ruined ship, ancient bulk jutting out of a churning sea like broken green glass, the metal humming with battering of the waves.

He took a glance back, the open door a gap in one of the ship's external accessways.   
He was still in his borrowed armour from the Normandy, rain and spray running down the chipped blue carbon and polysteel, mingling with the water plastering his hair to his face. He could feel his amp at the base of his skull singing in time with the lightning skittering from cloud to cloud overhead as the thunder growled.

(Kaidan, come back to your cell. Whatever you're seeing is just evidence of your psychosis.) The doctor's voice said, but not in his ear.

He balled his gauntleted hands into fists and took another step, then another, towards the edge of the hull, feeling the metal hum under his feet. It was a trap. The leviathan lurked somewhere under that jagged sea, waiting for Shepard to find him, find away around the relay Kaidan had destroyed on this very ship.

"I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!" Kaidan roared out into the storm, pushing every bit of his power behind the words. Blue sparks danced along the surface of the ship, chunks of rust and coral lifting away from the surface. "YOU STAY AWAY SHEPARD! IT'S A TRAP YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH!" He screamed, hard enough that he saw light prickling in his vision. "PLEASE!!" His voice cracked as he tried to shout over the thunder. "I AM NOT GOING TO LET YOU BASTARDS HAVE HIM."

The wind roared in his ears and Kaidan sank to his knees while the hull shook violently beneath him. (Time lies. I've been here for a day. I'm a million light years away. Shep. I'm sorry. I'm..)

The roar pitched down, the whine of a drive core then, and he knew it wasn't the wind. Scrambling around, Kaidan blinked against the spray, in time to see the Normandy's shuttle setting down behind him.

"That was really dramatic, Doc." Vega said, shouldering his rifle as Garrus blinked irritably at the rain. "Super cool, though."

"Vega." Kaidan croaked out. "You're not real. Are you real? I... "

"Yeah, my abuelita would totally say I'm real." Vega hopped off the hovering shuttle and offered a hand to Kaidan. "Look, we gotta go, man."

"Where's Shepard?" Kaidan rasped as Vega hauled him to his feet. "This is a trap, Jimmy. They need him to power the crucible, they.."

"It's cool man." Vega winked, and flicked his chin towards the horizon. "Remember Elysium?"

Kaidan followed the motion and he saw the flash on the horizon.

 

**FIVE**

Vega had practically carried him into the shuttle after that, and they were barely inside before Steve hit the thrusters and pushed off from the wreckage.

In the distance, the flash flared like an emerald sun - green shading into gold, and Kaidan furiously tapped on his omnitool. "He's offgassing even more efficiently than before. There's no blue at all in that waste.." He sputtered as the waves began to crest outward. "These are biotic readings I didn't even think.. They're going to shit themselves at Grissom... I mean.. He's had another jump in control." He muttered quickly, mostly to himself as the data scrolled across the omnitool's screen.

"He had quite a conversation with Javik." Steve supplied as the shuttle climbed, banking as close to the ever-expanding bubble of gilded-green as it displaced the seawater. Beneath them, the ancient wreck shook violently, crumbling under the impact of enormous waves. "It's been something, having a fifty thousand year old AI try and take over the Normandy. Joker has NOT been happy. And Shepard..."

"Has been like a million times crazier than usual since you pulled that stunt on Ilos." Vega supplied. "I'm pretty sure that's how he says I love you."

At the center of that blinding light, Kaidan's omnitool was able to filter a small, shadowy shape. Dragonfly wings glittering against dull grey-black. Shepard's armour seemed to absorb every bit of light around it and the spherical eyes of his helmet shone nearly white.

Directly beneath Shepard, the sea opened up, his power pushing the ocean back like a watery curtain, exposing the sea floor miles below.

And that's when they saw them.

Easily the size of the Normandy herself, oily green and peppered with a million little divots on their sea-crusted carapaces. Eyes as big as a shuttlecraft rotating wildly, clawed legs twitching fitfully as they supporting sea fled from them. They fired off every primal terror stored in the animal parts of Kaidan's brain and he heard Vega and Garrus gasp behind him.

In their stomach-churning shapes, he could see what would become the stylised form of the Reapers. Their children. Their mistake. A mistake they had spent a billion years sacrificing other species on the altar of.

Water cascading from their horrifying shapes, the Leviathan had been unmasked.

 

**SIX**

He could hear Anderson. Kaylee. The nameless doctor with her pleasant smile. The simulated voices of the people who had become his friends. Everyone the Leviathan had tried to twist his memories with.

"You cannot do this. We are your only hope!" The chorus screamed in his brain. "We have the only weapon that can destroy the harvesters!"

Kaidan's teeth hummed in his skull as the green light pulsed, his own powers surging in harmony with the scene below. In the back of his brain, Shepard's voice was very clear. "How did you keep saying it to him?" The insectile helmet tilted and the glowing eyes flickered. "We all have our parts to play, yes? So here's the part *I'm* going to play. We're already securing what you have of the Crucible. We'll handle that from here. But you? You know who's been DYING to meet you again after all these years?"

"NO!" The voices cried out, carapaces quivering under the battering light.

"I'm going to find that Reaper that's wandering around our galaxy, and I'm going to find all of it's friends. See, I know how to talk to them now. I've been inside their brains. And after I find them, I'm going to bring them here. I'm going to send them to wherever the rest of you have been hiding."

"THIS WAS OUR HOME! THIS WAS OUR KINGDOM! YOU BELONGED TO US!!! YOU HAVE..." The voices began, only to fall silent as Shepard lifted the huge forms up from the sea floor.

"In the name of the Prothean empire, in the name of the Alliance, the Council and just about everyone you ever ground under your claws... I'm gonna have to disagree." The shadow-shape made a tiny, dismissive gesture, and the bubble shattered.

The flare of light came first, followed a moment later by the deafening roar of displaced air and ocean.

The Leviathan went tumbling away, hitting the water hard as the sea came rushing back in. As their massive bulks skidded across the surface, the first of the shockwaves shuddered outward. While Steve fought the tumbling shuttle's controls, down below, hundred-foot waves swallowed the flailing creatures..

Kaidan clung to the handgrips, praying that he survived long enough to get the data analyzed. Survived long enough to see Shepard again. To tell him...

The shuttle suddenly stopped it's wild bucking as green light flooded the interior, shattered into iridescent slices by the beating of dragonfly wings.

"So." Shepard said, voice distorted by the helmet as he perched in the open cargo door. "Was it worth the wait?"

Kaidan didn't even laugh to respond as he flung himself against that shifting, living armour. "You have no idea." He rasped as they fell to their knees, Shepard clutching him close. "You have NO idea."

  
**EPILOGUE**

The captain's quarters on the Normandy were cramped, but Shepard had clearly made himself at home in them, drawings scrawled on the walls and the floor. Kaidan saw himself in them, small but not helpless, in the thrall of the ancient creatures.

"I still don't know what was real. What wasn't." He said in between fierce little kisses as Shepard walked them both to the bed. "I don't even know if this is." Shepard's undersuit gleamed like a snake's skin in the dimmed lights.

"Vlad the Impaler." Shepard said suddenly, hands resting on Kaidan's waist. "My porn name, remember?"

"Oh my god." Kaidan snorted, then paused, running his hands down Shepard's back and luxuriating in the feel of his suit under his hands. "This feels like the shape things are supposed to be." Against him, Shepard squirmed and Kaidan could picture those coarse tattoos peppering the vanguard's body. He wanted to map every one of them. "Were you serious about the Reapers?"

"Once we figure out how to use the Crucible for real? Hell, yeah. I don't make idle threats." Shepard murmured against his throat, guiding Kaidan's hand to pull down the zipper on his suit. He sighed for a moment as Kaidan splayed his hand against a particularly ugly cat in a top hat. "So, you with me doc?"

"What do those ripples you hear from the future say?" Kaidan purred, peeling back the suit.

"Till the end of time." Shepard murmured, eyes distant for a moment. "But it's your decision. I don't want to.."

"...till the end of time, then." Kaidan fell back on the bed, pulling Shepard on top of him. "My decision. Let's go save the galaxy."

Shepard straddled him, shimmying out of the top half of his suit. "In a little bit."

Kaidan grinned. "In a little bit."

 


End file.
